Filer's Files

SAN LUIS — Manuel Sanchez found his fourth mysteriously slaughtered calf in as many weeks. “I have no idea what could do this. I wish I did,” he says. Four calves, all killed overnight with their innards gone, tongues sliced out, udders carefully removed. Facial skin sliced and gone plus eyes cored away. Not a single track surrounding the carcasses, which were found in pastures locked behind two gates and a mile from any road.

Not a drop of blood on the ground or even on the remaining skin. He’s heard of thieves slaughtering livestock in the field for their meat. Sanchez states, “A lion will drag its kill. Coyotes rip and tear flesh. These were perfect cuts — like with a laser or like a scalpel. And what would take the waste — all the guts — and leave the nice, tender meat?” Sanchez says, “They don’t leave any trace.” (Photo courtesy of Chuck Zukowski)

There have been at least eight such deaths in southern Colorado this year.” They just stripped this one,” says Tom Miller, who in March was one of three ranchers near Trinidad who discovered mutilated cattle. One morning, he went to feed his herd of 80 Angus cows. The herd was racing about and a cow that a week before had birthed a calf was bellowing. Miller says, “The remains of a calf killed show the killer’s odd predilection for entrails and ears sliced off in surgical-like cuts; with no tracks and no blood anywhere. “ I know it’s not coyotes only a human or something like that can cut the ears like that; it doesn’t make any sense.” says Miller. Colorado Brand Inspector Dennis Williams came out and looked at Miller’s calf and says, “Totally unexplainable, it looked like that calf had been dropped from a high distance, the way its hips were dislocated and all its broken bones!” That same month, ranchers had called Williams to grisly scenes of mysteriously mangled cattle that had been seen healthy the day before. Worldwide, the incidents number more than 10,000. Sanchez lost cows in 2006 and 1993, Miller in 1997 and 1980, and Duran in 2000 and 1995. Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_13956752#ixzz0ZKdjf6YV

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